Ask Rotoman

Fuck the South

Points that are well-taken, provocatively spoken. Don’t open if you can’t stand cussin’.

Mark Comolli – Baseball Cube

Off the yacht and working on capsules. It’s the section I call “Useless Pitchers,” about 300 guys who either pitched in the majors the last two years, had decent years in Double or Triple-A last year, or are seasoned vets coming off injuries. There is stuff to describe about their games, but the evaluation is unrelentingly some version of “Has a chance if he learns to throw strikes past guys.”

I cut a lot of guys from consideration because they’re not advanced enough, or are probably going to be out for the year, and then there is Mark Comolli. I wrote, “7.71 ERA in 116.1 IP in Single-A as a 25 year old,” and then entered the code that means he won’t be in the magazine. Then I noticed something.

He walked 131 guys. That’s 10.13 per 9/IP. Holy cow. I just noticed he also threw 25 wild pitches.

All of this is a new thing for him, some kind of Rick Ankiel possession. Too bad. Wow.

Baseball Info Solutions – Books

My copy of this year’s Bill James book came yesterday. This book was always a great treasure because it conveniently had career stats for all major leaguers, minor league stats for recent major leaguers, lefty righty splits and managerial tendencies and park factors. Among other things.

Recently win shares have been added and Bill James’ projections for hitters are back. This year there are also Career Projections, which show Barry Bonds finishing his career with more than 900 homers. Yikes.

There is also an attempt by Sig Mejdal to quantify injury risk. Bill James has some interesting things to say about these numbers in his projection essay.

In short, there is lots here and it’s here now. Order it from the link in the left column here and you’ll be helping support this site. While you’re at Amazon, buy all the Lord of the Rings DVDs and expensive kitchen ware you can. Ask Rotoman is commissioned on those, too.

Rotoman at work…

It’s crunch time for the magazine, so the editorial staff has convened on the Rotoman yacht, where we race when we’re not sculpting perfect player capsules.

And which is why I’ve been scarce lately.

Ellisblog

Pretty convincing post mortem from W’s cousin, the man who perhaps won him the election in 2000.

One other thing it suggests: As perhaps wrong-headed as it was to make Edwards the VP candidate, a ticket headed by Edwards (a foreign policy lightweight) would out of necessity been backed by Zinni or some other heavyweight. Would that have made it a better bet? I’m not sure.

Why Democrats Should Be Thankful – At least they don’t have to clean up the Bush fiscal catastrophe. By Daniel Gross

Gross writes:

“In decades past, increasing Republican dominance of the House and Senate would have meant more fiscal discipline. But Republicans increasingly dominate the states that are net drains on Federal taxes—the Southern and Great Plains states—while fading in the coastal states that produce a disproportionate share of federal revenue. (It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are sucking on the federal teat.) What Amity Shlaes quaintly identified in today’s Financial Times as the “southern culture of tax cutting” has been married to the southern culture of failing to generate wealth and the southern culture of depending on federal largesse. The offspring is an unsightly deficit monster.”

I suggest that if there is something to be done, the blue states need to disengage. We need to assert our rights as states and refuse to send our cash to Washington, only to see it distributed to the red states. We need to hold onto that money and use it at home to improve our health systems, our education systems, our environmental policies.

The Bush Tax Policies, as Gross points out, aren’t cuts. They are deferrals, a free lunch eaten now that will itself come back and bite us (or our children) when those who hold our debt decide to collect.

The only way to drive this home to the Reds and change the terms of the political discussion from one of values to one that addresses real issues is to slow the flow of our money their way.

(On a baseball note: No doubt this is the way the Yankees feel about sharing the receipts of their home games, but in general baseball’s system works for them.)

Yahoo! News – Bush Pledges to Change Social Security

The funny thing is that the last Republican president to achieve gains in the house and senate while he was being elected was Calvin Coolidge, whose ruinous fiscal policies led (indirectly) to the creation of the Social Security system W is trying to unravel.